Publications

Plum Insight: Who will meet the UK’s broadband USO?

On June 19th Ofcom published a document seeking expressions of interest from telecommunications operators to become providers of the UK’s broadband universal service. This Insight paper provides a commentary on the document, discussing the specification of the USO, how it is to be funded and the questions yet to be answered.

Plum’s understanding of the challenges of delivering a broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO) is based on experience acquired over the past two years from Plum’s extensive work on the subject. This has involved both detailed modelling of the costs of implementing a broadband USO in the UK and two reviews of how other high-income countries around the world are tackling the problem of ensuring everyone has access to decent broadband at an affordable price, regardless of where they live